In 1922, T. Edward Hill, the director of the West Virginia
Bureau of Negro Welfare and Statistics, described his home state as
a place where, "the races live side by side, work side by side,
co-operate for community uplift and show a spirit of fairness and
tolerance unsurpassed anywhere and equaled in but few places."
Hill's writings are contradicted by ongoing events in the state
capital during the years following World War I. During these years,
local blacks in Charleston formed one of the most active early
branches of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People (NAACP) in the nation, under the leadership of a new
arrival, the Reverend Mordecai Wyatt Johnson. Their actions
revealed the fault lines of race relations in the state capital and
the willingness of local blacks to challenge discrimination in
their city and state.

Charleston's black community was hardly alone in embracing this
historical moment to press for full equality in the United States.
The decades following the Civil War witnessed the retreat of the
federal government from enforcement of blacks' newfound rights, as
evidenced in the rise of segregation, housing and employment
discrimination, and disenfranchisement. Violence, including
lynching, undergirded these systems of legal and extralegal racism.
In response, blacks engaged in widespread resistance, ranging from
legal challenges to armed self-defense. Shawn Alexander's work on
black protest organizations in the late-nineteenth and
early-twentieth centuries demonstrates the manner in which groups
like the Afro-American League and Afro-American Council laid the
foundation for the rise of the NAACP by emphasizing anti-lynching
protests, court battles against discriminatory laws, and engagement
with elected officials. With the rise of the interracial NAACP in
the 1910s, black and white activists thus built upon the examples
of earlier agitators in shaping their approach to the "race
question."

By the late 1910s and 1920s, national and international
conditions helped to create the generation of "New Negroes" who
helped lay the foundation for the civil rights struggles of the
mid-twentieth century. Jonathan Rosenberg has noted the wide array
of political thinkers and activists who attempted to use World War
I, particularly the service of blacks in the war effort, to argue
for civil rights on the home front. While some leaders, like W. E.
B. Du Bois, urged the black community to set aside its "special
grievances" for the duration of the war, others carefully crafted
their arguments for racial equality in the same terms used to
promote the war domestically. Such issues became even more
pertinent and pressing after the war ended, when competition over
jobs and housing exacerbated racial tensions nationwide, leading to
the "Red Summer" of 1919 and two dozen race riots across the
country. Harry Jones, a black high school teacher in Wheeling, West
Virginia, noted the discrepancy between the aims of the "war to end
all wars" and the continuation of Jim Crow policies in the United
States. "The Negro, 'having given his best . . . "to make the world
safe for democracy," having had sounded repeatedly into his ears
that all mankind is entitled to self-determination, has formed the
opinion that Democracy ought to begin at home, and that he ought to
share in the fruits of victory.'"

This study, then, builds upon the existing scholarship of how
black activists used the backdrop of World War I to frame civil
rights debates. More importantly, it seeks to expand upon the
growing field of "local studies" within the literature of twentieth
century civil rights activities. As Adam Fairclough noted, an
important advantage of such studies is that they are more likely to
integrate the various perspectives of blacks and whites. "[The]
civil rights movement involved a dialectic between blacks and
whites. Neither side, moreover, was monolithic, and a study of this
dialectic enables us to escape from the stereotypes that have too
often reduced history to a simple-minded morality play." Conditions
in Charleston, including the political participation of local
blacks, allow us to examine interracial coalitions and negotiations
in a more nuanced manner, while still giving particular emphasis to
black agency in the face of legal racism.

Black Life in Charleston

John C. Inscoe's study...

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